


a restless sort of wondering

by Jade_Sabre



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Spoilers up to episode 65, some mention of fjorster
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-11 13:23:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19110547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade_Sabre/pseuds/Jade_Sabre
Summary: Jester takes watch.  Caleb asks a question.  Spoilers through episode 65.





	a restless sort of wondering

**Author's Note:**

> I'm BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK. And feeling a little rusty, but also still have strong feels about how things go down in canon, so here we go, stretching the ol' muscles again. Unbeta'd. About to be jossed in oh about ten minutes, I'm sure. Hope you enjoy!

After the past few wet and rainy days, the stars spilled across the clear night sky like so many diamonds, some bright and clear and sparkling, some a shimmering breath of so much dust, the kind of dust Jester needed if she was ever going to get Orly to teach her how to do magic tattoos. She hadn't thought about the tortle in days and the old longing was something of a relief, a welcome distraction, a reminder of when Avantika had been the worst of their worries. She remembered too sitting on the deck during the nightwatch, sketching the sky and listening as Orly taught his apprentice how to steer by the constellations. She couldn't see half the ones he'd mentioned, this far north, and she could see other formations she didn't have names for hovering over the northern horizon. She'd have to ask a Krynn about their constellations. Maybe Essik would know.

Mostly she was glad she didn't see a giant shadow blotting any of them out.

She shivered and brushed her hair to one side, rubbing her aching arms— _stupid_ —and shifting to put the Arbor Exemplar even more firmly at her back. Maybe stupid, too, since who knew how far a giant bird could fly, but they were in the dome and they were safe in the dome and Yarnball was good at hiding out and if they hadn't climbed the stupid tree they'd be out of the Barbed Fields by now and—the stars were out, and something about the cold crisp air beyond the dome made them particularly beautiful, and she was glad to see them.

She slipped her sketchbook out of her haversack and fingered the spine, not sure what she wanted to say. She sighed and rubbed her arm again and looked around the sleeping figures of the Mighty Nein and met Caleb's gaze as he lay almost at her feet, watching her.  
  
They stared at each other for a minute—she startled, he a little embarrassed—and then she said, "You don't have to take watch too, I'm okay, I've got it."

He didn't answer right away, still studying her, and in her head she sketched him for the Traveler: head pillowed on one arm, the other protectively across his books, Nott curled at his feet; the lines across his forehead, the hollows of his cheeks, the brightness of his eyes even though in the dark she couldn't see how blue they were; the still-strange shape of him in his new clothes, though his old coat at least served as a blanket. The faint scars on his hands. The flop of his hair. In her head she changed out his nose for an eagle's beak for laughs and gave him wings for freedom, and the thought made her surprisingly wistful.  
  
And then he sat up, the coat falling off his shoulders, and in a moment he was cross-legged across from her, rubbing his chin. She opened her mouth, ready to tell him to go back to sleep, but something in his expression made her wait; and then he asked, "Are you…all right?"

He wasn't just asking to make conversation; Caleb never did, and she sighed and rolled her shoulders and looked back to the sky to escape how suddenly _trapped_ she felt under his gaze. "Oh," she said, but she didn't want to admit it, "well."  
  
He rubbed his chin again and scratched at the stubble, which had already laid a solid foundation for another beard in the few short days they'd been traveling. "I mean," he said, and when she looked back to him he had finally looked away and the tightness in her chest eased, "it was a pretty crazy day. A lot happened, and some of it was…"  
  
"Bad?" she suggested, setting the sketchbook beside her and resting her hand upon it for courage.

"Harrowing," he said, because of course he had a big word to suit the situation. She rolled it around her head, decided it fit, nodded; and he continued, "so, if you—it would be understandable if…"  
  
"Well," she said again, and then she tilted her head back and forth and said, "the part where we were falling out of a giant tree and almost snatched away by a giant bird and taken to its nest and fed to its babies wasn't so great."

" _Ja_ that was not…one of our finer moments," he said. "But—"

"We survived," she finished, and he inclined his head towards her in agreement. "Barely. Somehow. We always manage." And then she winced and said, "Usually."  
  
" _Ja_ ," he said, and now he was watching her again, and she very deliberately and obviously looked around to avoid his gaze. "You are…doing better, with all our close calls?"  
  
"Oh," she said, and the tip of her tail twitched before she drew up her knees and settled it around them, resting her chin atop them. "I…guess? I mean, we keep having them, so…I don't _like_ them, but it's…" She shrugged and looked up to meet his gaze. "It's not as bad if I'm not alone."

He nodded at this as if he understood, but he still looked—dissatisfied, as if something else was bothering him or maybe he thought something else was bothering _her_ and he didn't have to be _right_ all the time. He was wrong a lot of the time, actually, but whenever he got that _look_ in his eyes, that look that saw straight through all her cheerful pretenses and offered to let her shed them and just… _be_ …well, he was usually right about something. And normally that was—okay, better than okay, a welcome relief, but whatever was bothering whichever one of them right now was making her wish he wasn't quite so good at reading her.

To be fair, she was pretty good at reading him, too, but so much of the book of Caleb was in a language she didn't quite know, like words that were almost familiar but just out of reach and if she could only get her hands on the cipher she'd finally understand the whole picture. And he'd been dropping more hints lately, and sometimes she thought she had it, but then he'd go and give her a look she didn't understand—a smile she wasn't meant to see, or something—and none of it made any sense.

"But," she said, because he was apparently waiting for her to say more, and the words spilled out before she quite realized it, "I really hate feeling like we almost died over something stupid."

He nodded again, his lips thinning as he pressed them together. "I think though," he said finally, and then he said, "I mean, I feel as if…we spend a lot of time…almost dying over something stupid."

"Well," she said, having no defense, "that's true."

"A _lot_ of time," he said, "and if we're not almost dying then we're almost going to prison or almost alerting the entire guard to our presence or almost…"  
  
"Yeah," she said, wincing. "We should probably get smarter about that or something."  
  
"I have been saying that since we met," he said, and the corners of his eyes crinkled with fondness, "but it does not seem to have made much of a difference."  
  
She rolled her eyes to look at the sky again, eyebrows raised, chewing on her top lip. She liked the blackness of the sky at night; the rest of the world at night was shades of gray, and shadows she could see too far into, but the sky was a simple, uncomplicated, unending black, and she could rest her eyes on it. And the stars were so pretty and bright against it. She thought about saying, _so you must think I'm pretty stupid, huh_ , but that was maudlin and anyway she knew he didn't. So instead she said, "You're right there with us, you know."  
  
"Ah—"

"You were literally a _giant bird_ this morning," she said. "Flying around another giant bird's territory."

"Well—"

"Sounds pretty stupid to me," she said, and she grinned at him as he sighed heavily.

"You are a bad influence on me." A meager defense, and his eyes twinkled as he said it, and she thought maybe they were okay.

"I think you mean a _great_ influence," she said, but the twinkle had faded into something studious again, something that warned her against whatever he was going to say—  
  
"You are feeling stupid about something."

Not a question, and she couldn't help scowling at him, maybe a little more of a pout, even as she rubbed her arms and nestled her chin harder upon her knees. She wished he'd hurry up and make his point, but he hesitated, opened his mouth and closed it again, his eyes narrowing as he started to gesture and then stopped; and he wasn't quite meeting her gaze when he said, "Did you… _want_ …to climb the tree?"

"I don't _know_ ," she said plaintively, complaining against her own indecision or the question or the dam bursting inside her as he asked it. "I mean I wasn't planning on it originally and then Nott fell down and next thing I knew Caduceus was sending me up and Fjord was waiting for me like he wanted me to come," and she didn't miss the slight wince on Caleb's face as she said that and she didn't understand why he was asking if he didn't—or what it was that he didn't—oh, to hell with it, "and then—and then _I_ was falling and I thought 'oh no!' but then your spell saved me—"

"And Nott's," he said, though she didn't see why it mattered.  
  
"—and then Fjord was coming and I thought oh, he's going to hold my hand on the way down and then in _stead_ we're back where we were and he wants to keep climbing up and he kept helping me and so I figured—" and she tried to say it lightly but her voice failed and she just sounded cracked and sad, "why not?"

She couldn't look at Caleb as he digested this, not directly, and so she focused her gaze at the ground by his knee, on the simple dark uncomplicated black of his trousers, her fingers digging into her arms (and _gosh_ they were sore, and they had another whole day of riding ahead of them), the tip of her tail poking into her thigh. She hadn't realized how tense she'd gotten, tried to relax, succeeded in dropping her shoulders; and then Caleb drew breath, and she froze again.

"'Why not?'" he repeated, and then he waited for her to look up at him before he said, very seriously, "Because you didn't want to. Because you wanted to do something else."

"But did I?" she said, her hands gesturing upwards helplessly. "I didn't want to climb the tree, but I didn't want to disappoint Fjord, either," and he snorted and she startled, blinking up at him even as she kept talking, "and I could have—"

"He should have—" Caleb said, and then his mouth shut and he pressed his lips together and she could see the tightness in his jaw as he held back—what?

"—and I was…glad? When we got to the top? I mean," she winced, "it was really stupid and we shouldn't have done it but a lot of that is because we got attacked, I think, I mean—the view was really pretty. I got some good sketches. I'm…glad? I saw it? I think so. Maybe."

He stared at a point just past her shoulder for a moment, and then shifted his gaze back to hers and unclenched his jaw enough to say, "Would you be regretting it right now if you hadn't climbed it?"  
  
"I don't know," she said. "Maybe." She took a deep breath, almost on his behalf, almost as if in releasing it she could release whatever gripped him. "I grew up with a pretty good view, you know. I guess I appreciate…seeing other ones."

"Did you—" he started, and then he looked at her, _looked_ at her, and she felt herself almost lifted off the ground as he took her in, and for a moment she thought it was magic drawing her towards him; and then his shoulders slumped and she realized she was still sitting in her spot, just a trick of the dark. But she did find herself relaxing as the tension drained away from him, her tail unwinding and settling next to her, her fingers losing their grip on her arms, as he shook his head and rubbed his face and smiled at her, weary and resigned. "I am glad you enjoyed the view."

"It was a really nice view," she said. "I sketched it. Want to see?"

He blinked, and his smile brightened. "Sure," he said, and they stared at each other for a minute, neither moving, until she shook her head and scooted closer to him, picking up her sketchbook as she went.

She scooted until she was settled right next to him, knee-to-knee, shoulder-to-shoulder, and she felt something in her chest ease at the contact, a sort of reassurance that she did have someone to lean on. Like leaning on Beau, only Beau was more solid than Caleb, and leaning on Beau for support made sense, whereas leaning on Caleb was like leaning on the charred wall of a burned-down house that may or may not stay standing under the pressure. And he did sort of freeze when their knees bumped, but as she lowered her head to hide her sketchbook as she flipped to the latest page, she felt him relax, felt him lean back, and the ease in her chest suddenly turned into a bubble of glee that caught as a laugh in her throat and came out a cough.

" _Gesundheit_ ," he said, and she lifted her head.

"Here they are," she said, smoothing the pages and sliding the book until it rested half on her lap, half on his. She felt his hair brush her horn as he tilted his head closer to inspect her work, felt another giggle bubbling within her, tried to channel it into a grin, but her shoulders shook with the effort.

He didn't seem to notice. His head turned slightly as he looked at the first sketch, just one of the tree itself, and she heard a soft snort as he apparently noticed that half the leaves were dick-shaped; but he was otherwise silent and she couldn't duck her head to see his expression without being totally obvious. After a moment his hand hovered over the page, and she reached out and turned it for him. She smoothed the pages down as her hand came back to her lap while his hand remained hovering, fingers curling for a moment, until he dropped it and said, "Is that me?"

This was the two-page panorama view, with Beau and Fjord considering it in various poses she'd scattered throughout the branches, and Nott's feet poking out at the bottom since that was all she'd been able to see of her as she sat next to Jester, drinking heavily. And there, on the edge, a giant eagle midway between dancing from one talon to the other, feathers slightly puffed against the cold, head cocked and looking directly at her. She smiled a bit; the intelligence behind the eyes had clearly been avian, and yet the look was still unmistakably Caleb, piercing and quizzical. "Oh yes," she said. "You made quite the impression. Couldn't have left you out."

"Ah," he said, and he hesitantly reached and touched the bird's beak with one finger. She watched as he slowly flattened his hand on the page, saw again the faint scars, too many for counting, and just as she started to get too sad he cleared his throat and said, "You know I understand leaping off the tree and Featherfalling—not the best plan—but it looked like fun—it _is_ fun—what I am trying to say is, however, if you ever decide you want to go flying—" he cleared his throat again and she watched as his hand clenched into a fist before consciously relaxing. She watched, waiting, not quite holding her breath, something inside her deep and still and listening to the quiet undertones of his voice: wanting, offering, hopeful and hopeless all at once "—I mean, obviously you can just turn yourself into a bird, and of course you could do that if you wanted but I will warn you that birds are pretty dumb and it's not quite—if you would ever like a—a ride," and his last few words took his breath with them, ending in almost a whisper, "I would be happy to give you one."

She paused, considering this, considering first and foremost the strange way her heart hammered at the hoarseness in his voice, and into her silence he said, "You know. If you want to. Or if you don't that's—that's fine too. Whatever you…want."

"I—" her heart was in her throat and _why_? this was _Caleb_ "—I'd love to," she said, which was true, and then she truthfully added, "only maybe when we're far, far away from any—other…big birds?"

"Absolutely," he said, sounding equally relieved. "And anyway we couldn't do it now because the eagle can't see in the dark and also if I leave the dome it ceases to exist."

"Good point," she said, and now that his voice sounded a little more normal—now that he was worrying—she felt some of the strangeness within her ease. "But, you know, maybe when we go back to Rosohna—oh, it's night there too." She was disappointed, more than she thought she ought to be given that two minutes ago she hadn't even considered the possibility of going for a ride on the back of a giant eagle. Then again, she should have been far more excited at the prospect of going for a ride on the back of a giant eagle, but then again she'd almost gone for a ride in a roc's talons and that hadn't looked like much fun at all, but then again this was Caleb offering to do something nice for her, something he thought she'd like, and this wasn't the first time he'd made such an offering but she—he— _what_ was—

"Maybe," he said, and then he drew a breath and started again. "Maybe, you know, now that we can go back to Nicodranas and come back whenever we like—perhaps when we go check on your mother—"

She gasped. "Oh! Oh, do you think we could talk her into going for a ride too?" She pressed her hands to her cheeks. "Oh, I think she would like it so much! And—and the views are much nicer there anyway, and—oh, yes. Yes. Please," she said, to be polite.

She felt him laugh against her side and her heart went sideways in her chest and must have run into one of her lungs or something because she couldn't quite breathe right, either. "All right," he said. "Nicodranas it is."

She finally looked up at him, and of course he was still leaning over the sketchbook and so for a moment their faces were—close, too close, and he froze and so she did too, smile still on her face, grateful and strangely gentle against the panic in his eyes. The breath from his lips stirred her hair, and then he slowly straightened, very careful to stay—away—and she kept smiling through her disappointment, though _why_ she was disappointed—what she'd been hoping for—she couldn't say.

And of course he saw her disappointment, of course he gave her a smile, the kind of smile that said _it's for the best_ , and she wanted to stamp her foot and say _no_. But instead she just said, "Well, if that's settled, then you should get some rest."  
  
"You're sure?" he said, crossing his arms, nudging her sketchbook closed with his knee. "You'll be all right, by yourself?"

She opened her mouth and found _no_ still waiting to be said, and so she closed it and smiled and nodded instead. "I'll be fine," she said, when she'd nodded through it, and prodded him with her toe for good measure. "Get some sleep, Caleb."

"If that's what you want," he said, and she thought he meant to be teasing but he _meant_ it and it went straight to her heart and curled around it like Frumpkin around her neck, cozy and purring, and she felt her smile wobble so she just nodded her thanks and he nodded back, apparently satisfied. "Good night, Jester."

She waited until he was lying down again, watching as he pulled his coat back over his shoulders and carefully placed his feet against Nott's back, and then she whispered, "Good night."  
  
He didn't respond, and so she sighed and moved away from her sleeping companions, settling with her head against the curve of the dome and the Arbor Exemplar in the corner of her sight. She opened her sketchbook on her lap, stared at Nott's feet for a moment, and then sighed again and tilted her head back to look at the stars. Still twinkling. Still beautiful. And beyond them, darkness, simple and uncomplicated and unchanging and unsatisfying.

She turned to a fresh page, smoothed it by habit, pulled her pencil from her pocket, and hesitated with its tip pressed against the page; a moment later, a rough sketch of the skyline of Nicodranas flowed from her fingers, and she thought of all the buildings she'd like to see from above, and doodled what she thought they might look like, and if she covered the margins with question marks and a pair of eyes now shuttered, now piercing her through with light, well, she could worry about that later. For now she sketched her home as the stars wheeled over her head, counting the hours until she could see it again.


End file.
